Comments for Jonathan Boff https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com
Thoughts on the First World War
Fri, 14 Sep 2018 23:49:15 +0000
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Comment on The Battle of Amiens (8-11 August 1918): Some (Old) Thoughts by David Deasey https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/the-battle-of-amiens-8-11-august-1918-some-old-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-271
Fri, 14 Sep 2018 23:49:15 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=170#comment-271I think that you are absolutely correct in your assessment of the significance of artillery vis a vis tanks at Amiens. Too much is made of tanks, important though they were, as commanders actually had tanks available to them for relatively few days between 8 August and the end of the war. However there is significant all arms planning involved albeit perhaps not as strategic as Allenby and Chauvel at Megiddo. Re the use of Mark V* tanks it really depends on the formation as to how they were used. Certainly not as APCs but for example were used to deliver additional fire teams to the front to secure captured ground in the Australian Corps area. In this regard I find it strange that you make little reference to III Corps, the Canadians or Australians on August 8. The initial shock impact of the assault should not be underrated in the future success of British Arms.
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Comment on ‘Sleepwalking to War? Britain in 1914 and 1939’ by Patrick / @historychappy https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/sleepwalking-to-war-britain-in-1914-and-1939/comment-page-1/#comment-262
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 07:26:48 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=168#comment-262Great point about Britain being at the forefront of the military powers during the 1920s & 1930s. An often overlooked point and obscured by the post WW2 decline.
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Comment on Sainsbury’s, Christmas and #ww1 by Andrew Lucas https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/sainsburys-christmas-and-ww1/comment-page-1/#comment-247
Sat, 24 Mar 2018 18:02:33 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=99#comment-247I just discovered your website and will certainly be checking out your book on Kronprinz Rupprecht.

While I concur with your well-made points here on portrayals of the Christmas Truce (most especially regarding the centrality of burying the dead), I consider this advert to be – surprisingly – the best attempt I’ve seen to date at a dramatic portrayal of this event. It’s certainly more accurate than the critically acclaimed movie ‘Joyeux Noel’, which (for transparent political reasons) focuses on a three-way British / French / German fraternisation which unquestionably never took place; it worsens the offence by packing in a plethora of myths, from the transfer of fraternising German troops to the East as a pu⁬nishment to the portrayal of the German Crown Prince with the personality of Hermann Goering.

As specialists on the Royal Saxon Army of WW1, my Dresden-born co-author and I were astonished to see that the Sainsburys advert actually attempted to depict a specific Saxon unit which took part in the truce – namely IR 104 from Chemnitz, with which my Great-Grandfather’s brother was wounded as an NCO platoon commander in 1918. The tunics were wrong for obvious budgetary reasons, but the cockades and shoulderstraps were correct – and it remains the first time we have ever seen ‘our’ army portrayed in a British production. Naja – we are enthusiasts of the particular, and leave the great generalities of the war to academic historians to dispute.

In our small way we have made some original contributions to the study of the Truce in English. For our book on the Saxons in Flanders I painstakingly compared all of the available accounts from both sides along the front of Saxon XIX. Armeekorps (which comprised about half the total length of the Anglo-German ‘Truce front’, though this obviously had many belligerent gaps), including some German material not discovered or considered by previous researchers; please see the URL below for an expanded version of our research. In this way we were able to build up a detailed and remarkably consistent picture of events along the front, which varied dramatically from prolonged trucing to ‘business as usual’. One important detail that British writers have missed is that the formal truce proposal given to 1st Rifle Brigade and preserved in their war diary not only bares the signature of the opposing regimental commander (Oberst Kohl of IR 106) but also specifically invokes the authority of the corps staff – indicating approval for the proposal up to the highest level of purely Saxon authority on this front.

NB: as a biographer of Kronprinz Rupprecht I recommend you take a look at the autobiography of the last King of Saxony’s youngest son, Prinz Ernst Heinrich (my apologies if you are aware of it). He was related to Rupprecht by marriage and has a lot to say about him – it is clear that the two royal houses (both Roman Catholic) enjoyed a very close and friendly relationship.

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Comment on The German Spring Offensives 1918: Corollary: Why the British weren’t (quite) so dumb after all by Private George Fountain, 7/8th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers | Opusculum https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/the-german-spring-offensives-1918-corollary-why-the-british-werent-quite-so-dumb-after-all/comment-page-1/#comment-246
Wed, 21 Mar 2018 06:19:02 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=149#comment-246[…] [3] Jonathan Boff, “The German Spring Offensives 1918: Corollary: Why the British weren’t (quite) so dumb after all” Thoughts on the First World War blog, 9 March 2018: https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/the-german-spring-offensives-1918-corollary-why-the-br… […]
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Comment on The German Spring Offensives of 1918: Last Chance or Forlorn Hope? by Private George Fountain, 7/8th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers | Opusculum https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/the-german-spring-offensives-of-1918-last-chance-or-forlorn-hope/comment-page-1/#comment-245
Wed, 21 Mar 2018 06:19:00 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=146#comment-245[…] [1] Jonathan Boff, “The German Spring Offensives of 1918: Last Chance or Forlorn Hope?” Thoughts on the First World War blog, 5 March 2018: https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/the-german-spring-offensives-of-1918-last-chance-or-fo&#8230; […]
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Comment on The German Spring Offensives of 1918: Last Chance or Forlorn Hope? by Tony Bolton https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/the-german-spring-offensives-of-1918-last-chance-or-forlorn-hope/comment-page-1/#comment-234
Tue, 06 Mar 2018 11:39:24 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=146#comment-234The piece has a compelling logic. I would also recommend Gerhard P. Grosss The Myth and Reality of German Warfare. UP Kentucky 2016. for both Spring Offensive and post 45 German military thinking.
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Comment on Haig’s Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Front by Ross https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/haigs-enemy-crown-prince-rupprecht-and-germanys-war-on-the-western-front/comment-page-1/#comment-233
Mon, 05 Mar 2018 22:49:16 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=143#comment-233Congrats on the book, Jonathan.
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Comment on The German Spring Offensives of 1918: Last Chance or Forlorn Hope? by Ross https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/the-german-spring-offensives-of-1918-last-chance-or-forlorn-hope/comment-page-1/#comment-232
Mon, 05 Mar 2018 22:42:55 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=146#comment-232An interesting post-Jonathan. I wonder what the parallels are in the construction of myths viz a viz NATO’s focus on German operational methods during the Second World War. Both seem to smack of a case of weaponising history and not really looking at the broader strategic issues that confronted Germany in both wars.
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Comment on Mr Miliband in Mr Gladstone’s Boots? Scottish Independence and Irish Home Rule by flanders1914 https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/mr-miliband-in-mr-gladstones-boots-scottish-independence-and-irish-home-rule/comment-page-1/#comment-105
Sun, 03 May 2015 15:47:50 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=11#comment-105For the SNP this is increasingly sounding like a dream election. If there is a Tory government, the “The only way is out” feeling in Scotland will just snowball. If a minority labour government is elected and carries out its promise of no deals with the SNP the feeling in Scotland will be, what is the point of sending MPs to Westminster? In either case there is another election in 2016. An overwhelming SNP vote then would result in a Scottish UDI.
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Comment on Sainsbury’s, Christmas and #ww1 by The Significance of the Sainsbury’s Christmas Truce Advertisement | Defence-In-Depth https://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/sainsburys-christmas-and-ww1/comment-page-1/#comment-75
Wed, 17 Dec 2014 07:31:42 +0000http://jonathanboff.wordpress.com/?p=99#comment-75[…] callously attempting to cash in on the millions who were killed during the war. Others have posed important questions about the veracity of the tales of the Christmas truce and the Christmas football matches. While […]
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